


hold the sky in your arms and shine like a legend

by xerampelinae



Category: Voltron: Legendary Defender
Genre: Alternate Universe - Fusion, Alternate Universe - Neon Genesis Evangelion Fusion, Angst with a Happy Ending, Horror, M/M, paladin ensemble - Freeform
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-10-31
Updated: 2018-10-31
Packaged: 2019-08-11 10:45:54
Rating: Not Rated
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 2,970
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/16474082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/xerampelinae/pseuds/xerampelinae
Summary: “--Bond with the Black Lion--they must have synchronized beyond 100 percent,” Allura says, hushed and serious.“Is that possible?” Coran asks.Keith catches at the wall, steadying himself silently. He can’t track the conversation; he’s too heart-sick, too tired. The others want someone in the Black Lion; they wanthimin the Black Lion.-Evangelion fusion au. Shiro's synchronization with the Black Lion leads to his disappearance. Keith searches for a way to bring him back.





	hold the sky in your arms and shine like a legend

**Author's Note:**

> Happy Halloween! Here's my first attempt at writing horror.

Keith wakes in a cold sweat, standing in the corridor between the Black and Red Lions’ hangars. His knife is cradled unconsciously in his hand, comforting; for the longest time, it had been the most constant part of his life. This is not the first time he’s woken like this: barefoot, disoriented, heart pounding.

It’s like something’s calling to him. Two things, maybe, but in equal but opposite directions. 

Standing between the hangars seems symbolic in a way that Keith can’t swallow. He passes Black’s hangar with ducked head and only a glance. Red rumbles satisfaction in Keith’s head.

He won’t sleep like this, he knows. At least this way he can train in peace.

-

This didn’t happen before Shiro--before Shiro disappeared. Not like this. He’d woken a couple times barefoot and reaching out to the bedroom door to trigger its sensor but. The first time this happened was the night after Shiro disappeared. Keith had found himself at the entrance to the Black Lion’s hangar. Every time after Keith finds himself drawn between the two.

One night, walking back through the dim hallways he catches the edges of a conversation.

“--Bond with the Black Lion--they must have synchronized beyond 100 percent,” Allura says, hushed and serious.

“Is that possible?” Coran asks.

Keith catches at the wall, steadying himself silently. He can’t track the conversation; he’s too heart-sick, too tired. The others want someone in the Black Lion; they want _him_ in the Black Lion.

He doesn’t want any of this. He’s too hot-headed, as the other say. Too volatile. All he wants is Shiro. But Keith doesn’t get what he wants; not for long at least. He never does.

When the others cycle through the pilot’s seat, Keith feels eyes on him: watchful, wanting. The others have their eyes on Black for the slightest hint of a response; Black’s eyes are on Keith.

For the most part it’s easy to roll with the revelations of life in the wide, space-faring universe. But the Black Lion’s stare bypasses that, straight for the calculating gaze of a predator on the prowl. More than anything Keith feels as pinned down as a hunted prey creature from the nature shows on public broadcast, shown every week in the group home; he’s being watched and only time will tell if he gets free or ends up as a meal.

In the pilot’s seat Keith begs-- _”Please, no”_ \--but a presence enfolds him. It feels the way a star’s energy sings, whether it’s hale and whole or dying, a strange crackling energy that he knows from a single flight. Somehow both ravenous and consuming but gentled.

The Black Lion rises finally and roars.

-

That night Keith awakens between the Black Lion’s paws, feels as if it’s poised to swallow him down whole to keep him forever and unchanging within its belly. Not in the cargo hold but in some other space; a pocket of space where nothing is as real as the Lion’s dual will to protect and possess.

He doesn’t know where the thought comes, but it lingers in his mind. Keith shivers and feels golden eyes track him all the way back to his bed, and even still. His sleep is deep and unsatisfying.

-

They all take knocks in the Lions. It’s part of combat, of being part of a whole that’s so dangerous that the rest of the universe can’t help but sit up and notice.

The bruises are easy to write off. Some of the Lions are more heavily built, can take a heavier hit. But Allura ended up at Galra Central Command and Keith took Zarkon on by himself.

It wasn’t good. It was like the hardest combat training days (complete with full physical training regimen) multiplied by the car accident that rolled down a ravine and killed Keith’s favorite foster parent--the paramedics had been amazed that Keith was alive, let alone able to climb all the way up to the road, after--and it would only hurt more later.

(People liked to say Keith was lucky, _before._ But nobody liked to think about an orphan losing his only redeeming tether to humanity--losing a mentor, a friend on top of everything else was just misery porn. Easier to think only of an adolescent lashing out. It was easier for them after he washed out, easier to forget him after he disappeared back into the desert. 

Keith himself only has _after_. He does not have the luxury of forgetting.)

These days Keith sleeps as much as he can. Allura had said once that the Black Lion took more of its pilots than any others; he doesn’t know if she meant the way it demands his attention, watches him through the Castle walls and summons him on dreaming, shuffling foot, but it consumes his energy, pares him down.

There’s nothing he can do except search for Shiro and endure.

-

“I know I’m not Shiro,” Keith says, hand gentle on Black’s broad snout as his dreaming mouth shapes the remembered words, “but he needs help.”

A sudden cold stings at Keith’s fingers and palm, like a response, and the Lion comes alive alive, opening its jaws before Keith can say anything else. He swallows down his nerves and moves determinedly in.

-

He’s losing himself in small ways. The span of sleep that once kept Keith’s reactions optimized draws shadows under his eyes. He prickles to Lance’s taunts and jabs. Where Keith once stood as Shiro’s right hand and moved to support without overstepping, training and battle plans now fall fully to his care. Lance as his right hand is more like Van Gogh’s hand cutting away his ear: disloyal and too quick to carve deeply.

Sometimes Keith thinks the others trust him as only a hungry blade made keen with grief. He doesn’t know if they’re wrong.

Some nights, just to skip the trouble of walking back to his room, Keith settles down to sleep in the Black Lion. He can’t tell if it helps, but he thinks maybe it does. At least he’s not walking in his sleep--or if he is, it’s more restful.

The first night he curls up in the pilot’s seat is more grim curiousity than anything else. He’s tired enough to ignore the feeling of vulnerability and exposure, of being watched. He closes his eyes and _wants,_ tucking his chin down against his chest.

 _”Keith,”_ Shiro says to him, knelt down and hand tapping almost innocuously at his knee, the way he used to idly tap a table for his attention without touch back when that wasn’t okay, reminding him that they’d agreed to meet and go over whatever. Keith makes a small noise and Shiro smiles down at him, amused like he’s fallen asleep studying again, surrounded by textbooks. ”Keith, hey, you don’t have to sleep here.”

“Shiro?” Keith mumbles, words finally piercing the veil of exhaustion. His hand catches at Shiro’s wrist and he relaxes when Shiro laughs, idly following the lines of the prosthetic up to his shoulder. His bare shoulder. “Shiro--?”

Understanding hits them simultaneously--locking flustered, startled gazes--and Keith flinches and yelps as he falls from the seat. Shiro disappears. In his room later, Keith will question what he’d seen as equal parts exhaustion and longing except for one factor. Nothing explains the nudity that corresponds to the Paladin’s armor left strewn through the cockpit, emptied out and abandoned near the Black Bayard.

“I won’t give up on you,” Keith promises the next night, alone in the cockpit. Something growls in his mind; whether it’s an affirmation or anything else, Keith doesn’t know.

-

“Give him back,” the witch demands, voice low and face cast in shadow. “Give back my husband.”

“I don’t--” Keith says, readying himself to dodge the energy gathering in the witch’s hand. “I don’t know who your husband is. I don’t have anyone--”

“The Lion does,” the witch hisses. “The Lion knows.”

The starfield spins around them--they’re not wearing helmets, they’re not ready to survive the vacuum of space but they _are,_ this is a different kind of real--and the witch swings at him. The ball of energy passes just close enough to graze but it’s enough. Keith gasps in pain and reflexively summons the Bayard to hand.

“Give back my husband,” the witch says, hand curling around the Bayard’s blade to reach for Keith himself; he shoves her away and swings the Bayard. Crooked laughter drifts back to him as the witch vanishes into the air, appearing here and there to throw more crackling balls of energy. Keith dodges again and again, heart pounding. He can’t get close enough to use the Bayard; the witch doesn’t need the proximity.

Abruptly the laughter stops, as suddenly as when Red would appear and swallow Keith down when he needed the save. Keith finds no relief in the silence that follows, only a rising tension. Whatever storm is coming is still building.

-

“I’m going to save you,” Keith says, voice cracking as Shiro lifts him back into the pilot’s seat, arranging his limbs carefully. Shiro freezes, hand to Keith’s shoulder and Keith rolls into, to try and feel the warmth of Shiro’s too bare hand against his cheek. All he feels is a hungry chill but he can’t turn or even flinch away from it.

“I don’t know if you can,” Shiro says. “I don’t know if anyone can. Keith--”

Keith is alone again before he can hear the rest. “It’s killing me when you’re away,” he whispers. His only answer is the tears that fall into his lap.

-

“Allura,” Keith says in the morning, feeling exhaustion ring hollow in his bones. He thinks the others may be beginning to notice that things are more wrong than they thought. “What do you know about what happened to Shiro?”

“I’ve told you before,” Allura says carefully. “I don’t know what happened to him.”

“You must have some theories,” Keith says. The breakfast chatter peters off.

“I don’t--” Allura says.

Keith shakes his head. Coran tries next. “Number Four, what are you--?”

“Last night,” Keith says, “I woke up from a dream about Zarkon’s witch in Black Lion. Maybe I picked up sleepwalking in space, but I never make it that far and I don’t wake up like _this.”_

He easily shrugs off one shoulder of his jacket, exposing the glowing mark blooming across his forearm like a nightstick fracture. The memory of the witch’s attack matches the injury.

“Keith--” Pidge gasps, “why aren’t you in a pod, that could worsen--”

“It’ll keep,” Keith says with a shake of his head. “I was there with Shiro, this isn’t as bad as that was and he held on just fine.”

Allura is quiet for a long moment before she begins to speak. “We don’t really know everything about how the Lions work. Altean alchemy--I’ve never been trained the way my father was, there is so much he could do that I cannot.”

“Go on,” Keith says.

“The bond Paladins have with their Lions,” Allura says, “can be described as synchronization. The higher the synchronization ratio, the more in-tune Paladin and Lion are, the more effective they are.”

“So what’s the flipside?” Pidge asks suddenly.

“Pardon?” Allura says.

“What she means,” Hunk says, “is what’s the drawback?”

Allura hesitates again. “When the synchronization becomes strong enough, Lion and Paladin begin to psychically share injuries.”

“What the quiznak?” Lance yelps in the sudden burst of confused chatter.

“What happens when the synchronization is very strong?” Keith asks.

This time, Allura looks away.

“Princess,” Coran says.

“My best guess is that the synchronization will supercede all else,” Allura says slowly. “That Lion and Paladin may merge.”

“Are we in some kind of sci-fi horror movie?” Hunk asks, voice small and distant.

“Not now, Hunk--” Pidge says.

“Then when?” Hunk asks sharply. “The next time one of us syncs up with a Lion so strongly that we forget to have a body, or what, gets our brain uploaded to our robot cat spaceship?”

“Dude,” Lance says. “Are you okay?”

“I don’t know,” Hunk says, tone easing as Lance cautiously approaches and folds him into a hug. “I don’t know.”

“How do we reverse it?” Keith asks.

“Decrease the synchronization,” Allura says. “But that’s just a theory--”

“It’s a starting point,” Keith says, and stalks out of the room.

-

“Give him back,” Keith demands, voice rising. “Shiro--”

-

 _”Keith,”_ Shiro says, that warm and familiar fondness.

“I’ll get you out of here,” Keith promises, desperate and voice catching on gathering tears. “I won’t give up on you.”

”Keith--” Shiro says, eyes widening and rushing forward as if to brace Keith. The cockpit jolts and Keith wakes in the pilot’s chair.

“Paladins, we need you,” Allura’s voice rings out across the comms.

Gritting his teeth, Keith readies himself for the coming fight.

-

The others’ voices ring in Keith’s ears: distant, discordant, and pained. He dangles limply the pilot seat harness, drained of energy. The glowing injury from the witch has kicked up in terms of burning intensity but is still tolerable. Less tolerable is the way a Galran fleet occupies the others and keeps the Black Lion cornered by the flagship and the witch commanding it.

“Shiro, I need your help. I can’t do this without you,” Keith says.

 _“Give him back,”_ the witch whispers, voice filling the cockpit.

Keith opens his mouth--to plead ignorance? to call for aid?--and cries out when the next hit lands. Shiro, he thinks. If this is hurting him, it can only be hurting Shiro more. He struggles to grasp at the controls.

 _”Keith,”_ Shiro whispers in his ear. _”You can do this. Look through the Black Lion’s eyes.”_

Cold hands close over Keith’s, lacing them together over the controls. He doesn’t flinch. Next comes the chilling press along his arms, his back and all the way up his neck to where Shiro sets his cold mouth.

Keith is a small flame encased in ice but he feels the way they all align: Keith to Shiro to Black. The Lion growls.

Allura says, “Keith, your synchronization levels--”

Then they’re moving. The jaw blades deploy just as the wings spread. In a flash they hit the flagship--and again, and again. The witch shrieks as if to wake the dead, or as if forbidden to do so. Her voice cuts off but the sound of it fades slowly from the air. But by then Keith’s on the other side of the fleet and the others are rallying around him.

“Form Voltron,” Keith rasps. They do and it hits him like a shockwave, like a hot knife carving the heart out of his chest. “Form sword.”

Voltron obeys.

-

Keith gasps raggedly for air. Voltron is falling apart, but that’s okay, he thinks. The battle’s over. If the witch is still alive, she’s not an immediate issue; they can speak with the Coalition, with the Blades. The others won’t let him catch his breath--he tries to wave them off, but the radio chatter only explodes--until finally he closes the channel.

”They’re only worried about you,” Shiro notes, cold hand curled at the base of Keith’s neck.

“I know,” Keith gasps.

“You need to let go,” Shiro says. You can’t end up like me, he doesn’t say.

“It’s--I can’t let go of you,” Keith admits, head hung low. Shiro walks around the seat, kneeling in a mirror of the first time they’d met like this. It’s easier in a way; easier to keep eyes from wandering. It’s harder because it’s not something to become accustomed to. Keith is used to _wanting_ but never pressing for more.

“Oh,” Shiro says, then, “look at me, Keith.”

Keith obeys.

“You amaze me,” Shiro says. “You always have.” Then he’s pressing closer, closer than the hug meant to satisfy for the year and span of the Kerberos mission. His face twists with concentration as he folds Keith into a tight, freezing embrace. Keith can only welcome the touch, tender as fire consumes, as parched earth accepts long-awaited rainfall it cannot hope to swallow.

Shiro leans in close; Keith shuts his eyes and holds his breath until he feels the tide of another’s breath on his face, then closer still. The weight pressing Keith down into the pilot’s seat slowly begins to warm from the lips outward.

“You found me,” Shiro says, several lingering kisses in. “You saved me.”

Keith sighs and tips his face into Shiro’s jawline, tightening his arms around bare, corded shoulders where it’s relatively safe to linger. “We saved each other.”

-

They don’t get much farther than that--resumption of corporeal form confuses Shiro’s body and eventually they trade places, Shiro settled into the pilot’s chair. Keith kneels to help Shiro into his flightsuit and this, of course, is when the others finally succeed in forcefully opening a new communications channel.

“What the hell,” Lance yelps.

“Welcome back,” Pidge says, and forcefully closes the channel.

Modestly covered by the flightsuit only to the knee and otherwise only by Keith’s protective stance, Shiro blushes and laughs until Keith joins him and the cockpit is so full of laughter that it seems that Voltron itself is laughing.

-

The feeling of being watched by the Lions never fully disappears, but with Shiro’s return its intensity recedes to a tolerable level.

“They’re not like us,” Shiro says, staring distantly in a way that might be through a Lion’s eyes. “But with us they understand more. Want more.”

“I know,” Keith says, feeling the Black Lion’s watchful gaze when Shiro turns to him again. Then Shiro blinks and Keith remembers the familiarity in the weight of Black’s gaze. A familiarity that predated their discovery of the Lions. “I know.”

He meets Shiro’s kiss.

**Author's Note:**

> Title from "A Cruel Angel's Thesis" by Yoko Takahashi.  
> Have I watched Eva recently? Maybe 5 years ago. Look, I first watched Eva as a small child. I too am a product of the 90s. But I very strongly remember Shinji's clothing drifting by after they finally got the entry plug out and that's why Shiro's naked.  
> I had trouble writing this ending. Also the horror aspect


End file.
